California Today: For Hollywood Hills, Tour Vans Are Nuisance

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A tour bus on Hollywood Boulevard in 2015. The Los Angeles City Council is considering regulations to limit the access tour vans have in the Hollywood Hills, a neighborhood with narrow, twisting streets.CreditChad Ress for The New York Times

It’s not so easy living up in the Hollywood Hills these days. First it was the onslaught of tourists on foot, clogging the narrow, twisting streets as they used GPS devices in search of the Hollywood sign. These days, it’s a louder and more cumbersome intruder: open-air tour vans, pushing through on roads that can barely fit one car, some with loudspeakers blaring dubious claims by the driver. (“And on the left, the house where Humphrey Bogart once lived!”)

Confronted with the anguished concerns of neighbors, the Los Angeles City Council is trying to walk a fine line by responding to upset constituents without hurting tourism, a major economic force here. (And there are few tourist draws as big as the Hollywood sign.) The council is moving to adopt regulations that would require tour operators to give patrons private headphones, getting rid of squawky speakers. And the city is drawing up a list of streets where tour vans would be banned completely.

“You’re talking about over 100 buses every day traveling the small streets of Hollywood Hills,” said Anastasia Mann, the president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council. “Blocking Mulholland Drive and creating huge hazards. It really gets out of hand.”

Neighborhood groups in Hollywood are often criticized for being resistant to development and outsiders. But the roads in the hills can be extraordinarily narrow, and it is not unusual to come around a blind corner to confront an oncoming tour van.

“This is not a Nimby issue,” said David Ryu, a City Council member who represents the neighborhood, using the acronym for “Not In My Back Yard.”

“It’s been a plague on their neighborhood,” Mr. Ryu said. “This is about making sure the promotion of tourism is done in a safe manner. I see it as a way to crack down on the bad operator while making sure it’s safe and fun for all.”

California Online

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

• Two days before 2,800 teachers planned to strike, their union and the Sacramento school district reached a contract agreement that would increase pay and decrease the number of tests given. [The Sacramento Bee]

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Jersey, the island in the English Channel where Apple has found a new tax haven.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times

• Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, but its tax haven is the island of Jersey in the English Channel. The company has accumulated more than $128 billion in profits offshore. [The New York Times]

• The Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, a major investor in Silicon Valley who once owned significant stakes in Facebook and Twitter, borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin. [The New York Times]

• A medical tourism initiative for San Diego will target a domestic audience and promote the collaboration between the city’s hospitals. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

• The Walt Disney Company showed interest in buying entertainment assets from 21st Century Fox including the Fox movie studio and the FX television network. [The New York Times]

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Tianhao Zhang using virtual reality tools to show a robot how to perform a task.CreditAmy Harrity for The New York Times

• The start-up Embodied Intelligence, which focuses on machine learning, was founded by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and OpenAI, Elon Musk’s lab. [The New York Times]

• San Francisco is known for its hilly streets. And its skaters are known for “bombing” them — dodging traffic and racing through intersections without stopping. Watch a 360 video of their journey. [The New York Times]

• Southern California was ranked as the most stressful commute in the United States, according to a survey, even though the average length of commute was ranked eighth. [The Orange County Register]

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Hot Creek in California’s Long Valley Caldera, which formed after a supereruption 765,000 years ago.Creditdocentjoyce, via Flickr

• The Long Valley Caldera near Mammoth Mountain was created 765,000 years ago by a supervolcanic eruption. A new analysis may help scientists forecast future eruptions. [The New York Times]

• The Charles M. Schulz Museum and the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts have reopened after a lengthy cleanup following Sonoma County’s wildfires last month. [Sonoma magazine]

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Jared Goff during the Rams’ win over the Giants on Sunday. He has thrown 13 touchdowns and just four interceptions this year.CreditJulio Cortez/Associated Press

• The Los Angeles Rams were the N.F.L.’s lowest-scoring team last year. This season, behind a rejuvenated Jared Goff and the new coach Sean McVay, they lead the league with 32.9 points per game. [The New York Times]

And Finally ...

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The Cosco Busan was damaged after crashing into the Bay Bridge in November 2007, releasing bunker oil into the bay.CreditNoah Berger/Associated Press

On a foggy morning exactly 10 years ago, a container ship struck one of the Bay Bridge towers, unleashing a swath of oil that would contaminate the environment. The spill, caused by the Cosco Busan, was not the largest in Bay Area history — when two tankers collided there in 1971, they spilled more than 10 times as much bunker oil — but the numbers were striking.

44,400,000The shipping companies that owned and operated the Cosco Busan reached a $44.4 million settlement to reimburse government agencies that responded to the spill; as restitution for the lost human uses of the shoreline; and to restore damaged fish and bird habitats.

53,000The Cosco Busan sent about 53,000 gallons of bunker oil into the bay. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled about 11 million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989, and the Deepwater Horizon explosion released more than 160 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

6,849An estimated 6,849 birds died from the oil spill, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Birds from 65 species, including the threatened marbled murrelet and snowy plover, were killed.

100The crash left a 100-foot gash on the port side of the 926-foot ship, which was traveling at 11 knots, or 12.7 miles per hour, when it hit the bridge.

10The Cosco Busan’s pilot, John J. Cota, was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to violating the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. According to his lawyers, he had piloted about 4,000 ships in a 27-year career before the crash — with only one minor accident.

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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